The city of Tucson finally has one answer to its demands that the Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders campaigns pay the roughly $125,000 the city says the two groups owe for police protection at March rallies at the Tucson Convention Center.
A lawyer representing Sanders rebuffed a formal demand by City Attorney Mike Rankin for $44,013, saying the campaign never asked for police protection and suggested it should bill the Secret Service .
“The U.S. Secret Service typically made arrangements for all security matters with regard to Senator Sanders during his presidential campaign,” wrote Brad Deutsch, a lawyer for Bernie 2016.
“Therefore, to the extent the Secret Service independently contacted the Tucson Police Department ... to assist in its security detail, the law enforcement organization should discuss cost-sharing matters directly with the Secret Service.”
It's rumoured Trump is having trouble finding rally locations this campaign because of all the places he's been to over years without paying refusing to have him back until he pays his bills. The highlight being owing El Paso, Texas over half a million, ^[1] but that's just the tip of the iceberg.^[2]
I’m a venue manager. If Trump’s team wanted to organize a rally at my venue, (and I was forced to allow it), I would require 100% payment in full before they were allowed in the building.
In fact, my building collects a refundable cleaning/damage deposit, and I would intentionally over-estimate everything about the event; We estimate the event costs and require clients to pay up front. Then any overages can be claimed from that deposit, or invoiced after the event. Equipment costs, labor needs, room rental times, catering commission, merch commission, etc…
I would intentionally over-estimate all of that. So when they inevitably have some overages, (like maybe they use more mics than expected, or maybe they show up two hours early), those are already paid for in their initial payment. Then I’d just return any unused overages with the deposit, which is SOP. Because I know that if I had unbudgeted overages and tried to invoice after the fact, I’d never see a single cent.
I believe Bernie qualified for secret service by then and they were supposed to handle liaising with local PD. So Sanders campaign is saying "talk to secret service" and secret service is saying "we didn't ask for loan PD support so we're not paying".
It’s a police protection bill. Sanders was already under secret service protection by that point, and the secret service was who coordinated all of his security. So Sanders’ campaign manager basically told the city to bill the secret service instead of Sanders. Because again, the secret service was who requested the additional officers.